


Cardiac Dysrhythmia

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Eventual Cougar/Jensen, M/M, Obsession with heartbeat, heart problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There were many moments in his life where Jensen could remember the increase in his heartbeat, the pounding in his ears, the heavy thump against the inside of his rib cage. It wasn’t always related to physical activity, and sometimes he’d pause and just focus on the beat of his heart, wondering if everything inside was working as it should.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardiac Dysrhythmia

**Author's Note:**

> Reading a health and lifestyle handout at work and I read a little bit about heart palpitations, and it just got stuck in my head, and suddenly I was writing this story that seemed to focus too much on heartbeats. But, here you go. 
> 
> Beta'd by quandong_crumble. Thanks for fixing up all my tense issues. I don't think I'll ever try writing in present tense again, I can't keep writing like that without slipping back into past tense all the time.

There were many moments in his life where Jensen could remember the increase in his heartbeat, the pounding in his ears, the heavy thump against the inside of his rib cage. It wasn’t always related to physical activity, and sometimes he’d pause and just focus on the beat of his heart, wondering if everything inside was working as it should.

He remembers the times, huddled under blankets with Jess as a child, the pounding of his heart in his ears, hands pressed tightly to the side of his head in hope to keep that sound in. Even with the rapid ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump echoing through his skull, it is never quite enough to block out the shouting, or the sound of skin hitting skin. The high pitches of his mother’s voice, the sharp crack of her open hand against his father’s cheek. The deeper tones of his father’s swearing and the retaliating heavy sound of his fist. All those noises join his heart beat in reverberating inside his head, and he wishes that his heart would beat faster to drown them all out.

There are other times, growing up, when his heart would beat too fast, feel a little out of sync. In school, when he does something that draws attention to himself, or late at night, hunched over his computer, headphones on to keep the noise down, playing games that make his heart jam in his throat with adrenaline as his artificial health dwindles. When his mother walks out when he's thirteen and Jess is sixteen. She doesn't take them with her. But his heart is pounding as they plead for her to stay and in the end his words clog up in his throat and all he can hear is the ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump of his pulse and he doesn't know if she says goodbye or not.

He's fourteen when he looks up cardiac dysrhythmia, scours pages and pages on the internet trying to figure out if he's broken inside. Everything else in his life seems to be going to shit, his mother abandoned them, his father worked so much that he might as well have not been around either. He gets into fights at school all the time, and is on the verge of getting expelled from his second school if he doesn’t just learn to cooperate. It would make sense, then, if there was something messed up inside him as well. But after reading as many free articles as he can on the condition, he decides that isn't something he wants to have, even as his heart feels like it is jumping rope inside his chest.

He talks, all the time, but quicker and more frenetically when his pulse quickens. When he’s nervous, scared, excited, his heart flutters and the erratic pulse pushes against his ears, so he talks to try and drown it out. He has a habit of tapping away at the keyboard of his laptop in time with his heartbeat. Half the time he doesn't even notice he’s doing it, though the more he concentrates on the computer, in particular, hacking, the quicker his heart beats. Until it gets to the point that he feels that heady, almost sickening jolt of adrenalin, sweat prickles across his skin, so he strips down to his boxers and talks to the computer in such a way that seems fitting for being almost naked. Jess laughs at the things he says, but warns him that if he ever tries to use that "porn talk" on a human, he is likely to get a smack in the face. For a moment, he isn't sure if it is the burning of his face, or the drumming of his pulse that is the most distracting.

All through college it is the same, his heart rate kicks up during exams, the thumping in his ears that out laps the ticking of the clock in the exam halls. At the parties, afterwards, celebrating surviving yet another semester, too young to drink, but too clever not to have a fake ID, not that anyone cares. The growth spurt that leaves him at six foot disguises the fact that he is younger than everyone else. He talks, to drown out the rapid, panicked beat of his heart, when girls press too close, sloshing cheap beer and cheaper cask wine over his brightly coloured tee shirts until they look like a tie-dyeing accident. He talks, saying all manner of awkward and inappropriate things, regurgitating useless information because he can’t hear what he is saying over the drumming in his ears. The girls move away rapidly, and he feels like he can breathe again. After a while, people stop getting close altogether.

There’s a club, Jess drags him along, she likes having him there, it usually keeps the less desirable guys away from her. The pulsing, vibrating, distorted beat of the music inside the stuffy, dark, neon and strobe lit room makes it hard to know if he even has a pulse. The techno beat echoes in his chest and his heart feels like someone is trying to jumpstart it, but to the incorrect rhythm. Bodies press close, and it’s a nice change from college parties where no one wants to be near him anymore. He loses Jess at some point, but there’s a guy, shorter, older, hair bright and spiked, smiling at him, and looking at him like he wouldn’t care what he talks about. They leave the club, but the beat follows them outside into the back alley, steady and enticing like the beep of a heart rate monitor on the hospital shows that Jess likes to watch; he wonders vaguely if the music draws out into a flatline beep when the club finally closes in the early hours of the morning. He doesn’t have a lot of time to think about it though, because the guy is kissing him, and suddenly his pulse in thundering in his ears again and he can’t even hear the club’s music. He wants it, that attention, craves it, so much so that it doesn’t occur to him to protest when hands on his shoulders are coaxing him to his knees. He knows what it means, though he has no experience, and little idea, but he’s watched porn, so he hopes that he can wing it.

Afterwards he isn’t sure if he wants to be sick or pass out, his heartbeat in his ears drowning out Jess calling him. He ends up being sick when he gets back home, throwing up in the downstairs toilet, Jess hovering, worried, but covering it up with snide remarks about drinking too much. It’s not the alcohol though, he didn’t drink. He knows what it is. He throws up because he’s sick, because it is wrong, and he shouldn’t have enjoyed doing that as much as he did. Because there is so much messed up and broken inside him already that he doesn’t need being queer on top of that. All the derogatory words he’s ever heard for people like that flood into his mind, and for a moment there is something louder than the jagged, fitful beat of his heart inside his head. He can’t want that, because it’s wrong, and he wants to get into the army, and they don’t like people like him, and what if they just know? What if they can tell that he once gave a guy a blowjob behind a nightclub when he was just nineteen and too young to be there anyway?

They couldn’t tell. No one knows. He is twenty, fresh out of college and staring down the instructors as they are inducted to the army base. Training starts and mostly it is the physical activity that causes the elevated heart rate and the deafening pulse in his ears. He loves it, despite all the hard work, because of all the hard work, it’s everything that he wants in his life, so he pushes himself hard, tries to push away the thoughts of the other guys he’s going through training with, and for a while, it’s almost as though he’s normal. It doesn’t last though. He talks too much, and doesn’t always take well to orders, they call it insubordination and think hours of CAPE might rectify it.

Jess gets pregnant and whenever he’s home, she drags him off to appointments and he can hear the baby’s heartbeat and it’s so perfect that he wants to hold it in his hand and feel what it’s like to be normal. When Beth is born, he holds her close and tries to quiet his own heart so he can hear hers.

He’s on tour, trained, and apparently ready for life as a soldier. They use him mostly for comms and tech, and he’s okay with that, as much as he wants to be a soldier, computers have always been his thing. Things go wrong though; a group of men from his squadron get hemmed in and stuck under militant fire. The higher ups try to figure out a plan. He doesn’t think there is time for that, and when they don’t listen to him, he ignores any orders they are throwing around, and with live feed satellite imagery and a radio, he’s able to get the men out of there. It’s a success, but there isn’t much time to celebrate, because the next day, a road side bomb goes off and he’s thrown from the back of the truck. He’s sent home with concussion, four broken ribs, his right arm broken in two places and a persistent ringing in his ears. It drowns out even the beat of his own heart, and he misses that unsettled pulse.

He’s on light duties, doing office work around base, arm still in plaster, ribs still protesting his every move, but the ringing in his ears has subsided. One of the Brass approaches him three days into being back on base, a stack of blank forms in his hand. He salutes, but the Brass tells him to be at ease, and then goes on to talk about Special Forces, hands him the forms and tells him to apply, they could use quick thinkers like him. The pounding inside his ears drowns out half of what the Brass has to say, and he thinks he’s so stunned that he forgets to stand at attention when the Brass leaves again.

There is more training, more missions, getting shuffled around from one Special Forces team to another over several years. He doesn’t fit in, even with all the training, and all the skills, there is something that still sets him apart from everyone else. They all think he talks too much, but the thumping in his ears would drive him mad if he didn’t. Eventually, when no one else wants to work with him, he gets dumped at Colonel Clay’s feet and becomes a Loser; fitting, since that’s all he’s ever been, but he still thinks that he won’t fit in with even these people. Pooch talks to him, smiles and friendly ribbing, Roque glares and threatens, but it seems that if he didn’t actually like him, then there’d be no threats. Clay leads the pack from amongst them, not distinguishing himself as better than them; rank doesn’t matter while they’re on base. Cougar just watches. Somehow he can always tell when the sniper is watching him, he feels sweat prickle his skin, and his heart feels like it’s playing leap frog in his chest. He feels wonky, unbalanced, like when his ears were still ringing and he had the constant urge to throw up and pass out. But his ears aren’t ringing , all there is, is the rapid ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump of his heart, where it feels like it’s jamming in his throat every time Cougar gets too close. He talks even more, babbles complete bullshit, because awkward noise is better than awkward silence, not that it is ever quiet inside his head. He dodges and avoids, but can’t stay away, he finds himself seeking out the sniper, only backing off when the drumming inside his chest gets too much that it makes him dizzy. Cougar watches, always watching, and then there are smiles, quirks of his lips that would be a smirk on anyone else, but he can’t see it like that. Everything about Cougar makes his pulse race, but he tries to squash it down, because he cannot feel like that, it’s wrong, and they are army, and it’d never work. If he jerks off late at night thinking about that hat, smile, hair and intense gaze, it’s no one’s business but his own. At least he convinces himself of that in the aftermath, when his heart is still racing and he’s trying to fight off the shame that usually settles in.

They’re on a mission, somewhere classified, in a jungle, and he hates it, because he sweats, and the heat makes his heart skip, and he can’t strip off to only his boxers. Even worse, Cougar looks perfectly comfortable and just perfectly perfect. He takes a bullet, the first time ever, hot metal grazes his side, opening up the skin in a ragged line, but not causing anything but surface damage. He doesn’t feel it straight away, then runs, one hand clamped over his side, the other still trying to carry and fire his gun. It doesn’t work, and he can’t hear anything over the pounding in his ears, not even gun shots. They’re trying to get out of there, Pooch is bringing in the vehicle to meet them, Cougar is somewhere further off, providing covering fire, and he sees Roque and Clay off to his right. He doesn’t see whatever it is that he stumbles over, and then the world just kind of tilts and starts to roll, and somewhere distantly he thinks there is the sound of something breaking. There’s water, and he vaguely remembers there being a river nearby. It’s Roque who drags him out of the shallow river, and hoists him over his shoulder when there is pain, sharp enough to make him want to scream, in his ankle. He concentrates so hard on being quiet and not giving in to the urge of shouting in pain that he thinks he actually stops his heart at one point.

He’s back at base, stitches in his side, a cast on his foot and hobbling around on crutches. They are given unscheduled leave, because Clay doesn’t want to take on a floating techie. Jess is going to pick him up the next day, she was going to come sooner, but he told her to wait until she had a day off, no point in them both missing work. It’s only him and Cougar left in their house on base, and it proves hard to avoid a sneaky ninja sniper when he’s only got one working leg. Cougar corners him, looking serious, so close to pissed off that he’s worried he did something wrong, but the sniper is just stepping closer, getting into his space. The hands on his shoulders aren’t coaxing him to his knees, but trying to hold him in place, as though Cougar is worried that he’ll beat a hasty, hobbling retreat given half the chance. But he doesn’t really want to move. He’s heart feels like it’s doing star jumps in his chest, beating so hard that he’s sure he’s going to have bruises on the inside of his ribcage. His pulse is drumming so loud in his ears that he feels on the edge of panic, but then none of that seems to matter too much, because Cougar’s hands have shifted to cup his face and he’s leaning closer, watching, always watching, careful and calculating, as though he’s expecting resistance. Then Cougar’s kissing him, and it’s so much better than outside a night club, because it’s Cougar, and he wants this, and he can’t even convince himself that it’s wrong anymore. His heart is jumping in his chest, and because he has to know, he reaches out, places his hand over Cougar’s heart and he can feel it. The quick paced beat against the palm of his hand, almost perfectly in time with his, and for the first time, it occurs to him, that maybe he isn’t broken inside.


End file.
